If you’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the third generation iPad then today is a pretty big day for you. Not only is the March 16th arrival date (for people who promptly pre-ordered) just three days away, but lots of interesting information has bubbled up about Apple’s newest tablet over the past few hours.

First up is the video above. If you believe it to be legitimate, then what you’re seeing is the new iPad being unboxed and discussed. The video surfaced on a Vietnamese language forum, tinhte.vn, just recently and it looks trustworthy. The model number checks out — MD369LL/A (16GB, 4G, White) — and they even compare it against an iPad 2. They specifically point out that the camera on third generation iPad is different from that on the second generation unit. You can clearly see that the new lens hardware is larger than that on the iPad 2.

The team didn’t let their early peak at the third iPad go to waste: in addition to shooting the hands-on video they benchmarked the tablet as well. Industry-standard (at least for enthusiasts) Geekbench was chosen for the task. And how did the iPad and its A5X SoC, complete with updated quad-core graphics, do? Apparently it was rated at 756, which means well enough for tablets overall, but not much different from the iPad 2 (which typically scores in the mid-700s). Basically, it’s not the screaming fast rating you’d expect from 2012’s hottest tablet.

So why is the updated iPad so similar to the iPad 2, despite getting a graphics upgrade, that “X” special sauce, and twice the RAM of the iPad 2 (from 512MB to 1GB)? The best guess for now is that Geekbench hasn’t been updated to test the new hardware (it was last updated March 1, 2012) but we’ll all get to confirm on Friday.